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A review by agusto74
The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee
5.0
WARNING: SALIENT PLOT DETAILS DISCUSSED
This is the second novel I read in a relatively short space of time wherein an author fictionalizes the life of an aknowledged master of the literary trade. In Colm Tóibín's The Master I had difficulties connecting with the character of Henry James. The character didn't seem to be the driving force behind the plot at all. It felt more like he was being led by the author through certain events in the biography of Henry James. In TMoP this is certainly not the case. Here the character is present from the first page and we are rushed headlong into an engaging narrative written in the present tense wherein Dostoyevsky comes to St. Petersburg to visit the grave of his stepson who fell to his death in a mysterious way. In his attempts to make contact, and peace, with the ghost of his stepson we enter the world of a conflicted, selfish, difficult, sometime insincere, spiteful, and insecure character, but who also, through circumstance and his possession of warmth and insight, awakens our sympathy.
It is an amazing coincidence that I found this book in a second-hand bookshop so shortly after finishing reading Dostoyevsky's Demons (a.k.a.The Posessed) because this book is a fictionalized account of what inspired FMD to write Demons (where Nechaev became Verkhovensky). In particular it deals with how FMD sold his soul to write the single most horrible and sick scene I have yet encountered in literature (Stavrogin's confession). Of course the book is not as straightforward as all that, but I'm certain that that particular scene and at what cost, to the writer's conscience (or soul), it was written must have been what set the wheels of Coetzee's imagination in motion. The final chapter, where FMD gives in to his "demon" and starts writing the scene was unbelievably powerful and as it ended I felt both exhilaration and a certain emptiness. A state which only the best of books can bring me too.
UPDATE:
Whilst reading the book I was not aware of the following: "Hanging over the novel is a scene from Coetzee's own life: the death of his son at 23 in a mysterious falling accident."
This is the second novel I read in a relatively short space of time wherein an author fictionalizes the life of an aknowledged master of the literary trade. In Colm Tóibín's The Master I had difficulties connecting with the character of Henry James. The character didn't seem to be the driving force behind the plot at all. It felt more like he was being led by the author through certain events in the biography of Henry James. In TMoP this is certainly not the case. Here the character is present from the first page and we are rushed headlong into an engaging narrative written in the present tense wherein Dostoyevsky comes to St. Petersburg to visit the grave of his stepson who fell to his death in a mysterious way. In his attempts to make contact, and peace, with the ghost of his stepson we enter the world of a conflicted, selfish, difficult, sometime insincere, spiteful, and insecure character, but who also, through circumstance and his possession of warmth and insight, awakens our sympathy.
It is an amazing coincidence that I found this book in a second-hand bookshop so shortly after finishing reading Dostoyevsky's Demons (a.k.a.The Posessed) because this book is a fictionalized account of what inspired FMD to write Demons (where Nechaev became Verkhovensky). In particular it deals with how FMD sold his soul to write the single most horrible and sick scene I have yet encountered in literature (Stavrogin's confession). Of course the book is not as straightforward as all that, but I'm certain that that particular scene and at what cost, to the writer's conscience (or soul), it was written must have been what set the wheels of Coetzee's imagination in motion. The final chapter, where FMD gives in to his "demon" and starts writing the scene was unbelievably powerful and as it ended I felt both exhilaration and a certain emptiness. A state which only the best of books can bring me too.
UPDATE:
Whilst reading the book I was not aware of the following: "Hanging over the novel is a scene from Coetzee's own life: the death of his son at 23 in a mysterious falling accident."